I am trying to decide whether or not to buy v5I. I am doing large animations of developments in 3dsMax and I am looking to create environments to composite with the max animations. I would like to be able to import 'stand in' buildings into Vue that would catch shadows from trees and other environmental pieces. I can't find a matte/shadow material in Vue. I can't find a g-buffer channel that will make this work.

Has anyone had success in doing this with max, maya, lw, etc? If so, can you tell me the best way to make this happen?

Maybe render a pass without shadows, then use material ID for the matte and put shadows over the top of everything...? hmm...

Let me know if there is a solution to this.

Thanks,
Greg

blkmaJic

03-13-2006, 04:45 AM

what you need is xstream ..... in conjunction with Vue5I

Megalodon

03-13-2006, 06:44 AM

You "should" be able to do this without having to buy xStream. Try these links - perhaps they will give you a few ideas:

The G-buffer for Vue supports a shadow only layer and a material ID layer. I put my stand-in geometry into vue, and rendered out a full render, shadows and a matID for my stand-in material. Then I was able to composite the images using the full Vue render as the top layer, the matID matte as a mask for the Vue render, then I layed the shadow layer over my 3dsmax output and put my 3dsmax image on the bottom. The self-shadows are a bit of a problem, but I can probably edit them by hand and make them work. The only thing I really need the shadow layer for is what the trees and plants project onto the building.

xstream is not really that useful in this situation. I am not rendering with mental ray, so rendering inside of Max doesn't really need to happen.

If Vue had a shadow/matte material this would be a piece of cake. Maybe they do and I just can't find it.

Thanks for your help

Megalodon

03-13-2006, 07:37 PM

In order to have realistic shadowing in your scene, you should really look into the Synch Plugin provided by E-On for Max. We use Lightwave and many have been working on figuring out how to use this plugin effectively. And... several have managed to do so. I don't know how much help it will be for you using Max, but here is the thread at Spinquad with info for LW.

http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?p=122019#post122019

I think using this method may eliminate the problems you are having.

Megalodon

mdunakin

03-13-2006, 08:53 PM

Boy, Megalodon, you sure are posting up some awesome links!
Thanx a zillion for these!
I'm in this area of Vue and LW and modeling and texturing
and all the rest, and this couldn't of come at a better time. :)

This SpinQuad thread is great!
Suits my questions just fine.
Or at least goes to answering some of them.

Thanx!...........md :)

.

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